Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Hello everyone,

here I am again to share with you all what I am living, especially my doubts and my pains. And hopefully, in a near future, also my happiness :)

In this moment I need to know if, out there, someone has or had experienced what I am and had been experiencing.
For the sake of simplicity, I will put a number to each thing I would discuss about (yes I know, this is so nerd!).

I'm 33 y.o., from a mid-sized town near Naples, in Italy. Outside male, inside female, or a kind of.
(1) I spent all my life try to "understand" how to live. I never really "felt" anything special. To say the truth, I always felt shy, always, and buried in my deepest part ANYTHING on which ANY OTHER PERSON could attack me.
(2) I felt very "flat" along my puberty, and from 16 I started building my "self", male self. It was nice to have "success", but always felt there was something I was hiding from everyone, me included. I started to understand I had feelings for some of my male friends, but never admit it. I continued to "build" my life, trying to have a fiancee, and to "understand" the life.
(3) Meanwhile I tried to understand what to do with my life: I concentrated all my efforts in studying computer science, as I was good in Maths and I was near computers since I was 15. One bachelor, one Master degree and I started a Ph.D.. I started to feel uncomfortable, as I was more and more trying to be the "male" I built along my years.
(4) In the last 6 years I tried everything. I wish to change direction (study other things? not study? work? where? what?), and I didn't worked with girls. It was everything with no sense, I felt nothing.
(5) My HEAD started to spin faster and faster: was I wrong? was the life without sense? And I tried to convince myself that everything I was doing and studying, and a work in the area I was in was important. I feel to have reached several times a burn-out point, I felt short-circuited several times. Still, I continued my Ph.D., suffering a lot for the work and for the outer pressure from my boss, colleagues, family, etc.
(6) One day I start a journey with myself. I start to assume to like boys: it was a relief, although I had no courage to engage any.
(7) One day I read about "transgender" people. I got SCARED as hell, and could not NOT think about it. With courage (?), one day, I started cross-dressing. It was amazingly FUN, in the sense that I felt nothing special, apart the fact to seem RIDICULOUS :P My fears went away a little, but then I got attracted by the stories of transgender people.
One day I shaved my beard (I always had it on, I liked it), I looked at the mirror trying to understand, and BANG, I saw my mother's eyes, my eyes, and I screamed "No! I understood!" It was the first moment I understood what I was trying to figure out along all my life, or maybe to FEEL, to SEE MYSELF. It was 2014.
(8) I also SAW that I was on a path that I didn't fully mean to be on. My work, my studies... Since that moment it was everyday trying to understand who I were and if I was really a woman with a man's body. I confirmed it almost every day. Meanwhile I continued with my Ph.D., being SPLIT into two persona, the "old" me and the "real" me. It was a nightmare, but finally I did it: next month I will defend the Ph.D. that I started! What a bless, what a relief...
(9) Now I am home. I also had the courage (?) to say my parents what is happening, and started a gender therapy (but discontinued, as I leave home still for work from time to time). I am really lucky, for lots of reasons, including the fact that my parents did not throw me away from home, and they are (quite) good.
* And most important... *
(10) Anyway, I feel totally BROKEN. I feel that I can not start any other life, and cannot go back to the work I was doing, as I almost vomit enerytime I think about it. I feel ARID... I don't know what to do, where to go. Sometimes I just feel to leave everything I studied, and do something very basic. I feel I have NO PASSIONS-
Did anyone experience any form of BURN-OUT as I do? Is this BURN-OUT?
Please, tell me that I can be happy. I feel a SHORT-CIRCUIT everytime I THINK about something with which I can be happy (apart loving someone, and being felt with his and my love for him).
Feel totally BROKEN :( ....

Thanks everyone...
Kisses,
I.

What you are currently feeling is normal. Your life has been directed in one direction and you have been suppressing your  feelings. Think of it as a wall holding back the water. The wall has collapsed and now you are flooded with all the emotions and you are trying hard to keep you head above the water. For a few months you need to take care of the important things in your life like finishing your degree, if possible getting some therapy and coming to terms with yourself. The period I felt this way was between 2 and 3 weeks but it could take longer. Once you are over the worst of it, start working on your new life.

In some cases, people start their transition and may abort it for years before they are ready to face the transition again. It's best for you to work these feeling out and not avoid them because once you do you will be able to successfully face the future. I wish you the best of luck and let me know if I can help you more.

Most of your descriptions are things I recognize and relate to. Not every number... However, the progression to an apathy and feeling broken resonates strongly. You are not alone.

I think there is the promise and potential of happiness for all here. The journey may be long, frightening and painful but also funny, moments of joy and hopefully love(in the many meanings of that word).

I wish you and all here the love and acceptance we deserve and a wonderful holiday whether you celebrate or even believe in it or not.

With warmth

Joanna

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

I definitely can relate!

When I hit my teens, my peers began making it clear that my inherent femininity wasn't "acceptable".  As a defence / survival strategy, I buried my feminine side deep, and constructed a male mask to fill in the gaps.  Even so, there were still many aspects of male culture I just straight up refused and rebelled against, convincing both others and myself that "I'm not a girl, I'm just a different kind of guy!"

It was effective - to an extent - for many years, but all the while there were these (non-sexual) fantasies swirling around in my head.  Of course, I made many excuses for them to myself, and obviously didn't tell anyone.

But something was wrong.  I felt just... numb inside.  I thought maybe society was right and I just had to "man up", and so I started trying to embrace male culture more.  The reward for my efforts?  *SEVERE* panic attacks and hyperventilation (literally thought I was dying on several occasions and even went to A&E a few times...).  I even fainted at work the first time, and ended up in and out of my GP's office and saw numerous specialists at the hospital as they tried to figure out what the heck was wrong with me.  This went on for a couple of years, but eventually they worked out it was panic attacks and taught me how to cope with them.

But every cloud has a silver lining (or in this case, a pretty pink and purple lining! :D ). You see, these attacks were directly linked to stress.  The more stressed I was, the more frequently I'd have to fend off these attacks.  It sounds rather a lot like what you're saying here with "burn out" :) It forced me to re-evaluate everything I was doing, and cut out anything that was causing me unnecessary stress - it has been a rather useful yardstick to see what's working and what isn't in my life.

Around this same time, a friend of ours called Amy came out as lesbian, and so we all started going to our local LGBT night club.  It's an extremely well-run place, and they don't mind non-LGBT folks coming in so long as they don't cause any trouble (which obviously none of us did :) ).  Long story short, we went there for Halloween 2013, which the club makes into a big night every year because they first opened on Halloween many years ago, so it's essentially the club's birthday night too.  After the night ended about 2am, I found myself walking home on my own down a very long dark side-road with no one around.  I still don't know exactly what happened to trigger it, but being alone on a long dark road *something* in me just broke, and I went full-on girl mode.  And it felt *AMAZING*!  Seriously, the film wasn't out at the time, but it was just like (in my head at least :P ) the whole "Let It Go" bit in the Disney film Frozen (which is why I loved that film so much when it came out lol :D ).

You may notice that less than a month later, I came across this forum and made an account and, well, here I am lol :P  I'm still waiting patiently for certain things to fall into place, but in the mean time I'm researching furiously all the time, doing my best to wrap my little head around all of this.  I'm also finding little ways to let my feminine side out more and more.  This is helping lay some ground work with friends & family for when I come out (as well as "testing the waters", so to speak ;) ), but what I've definitely noticed is firstly a very definite decrease (to the point of practical  non-existence) with my panic attacks, and secondly a deep sense of wholeness I never had before.

As for the male mask?  I still wear it... for now.  But it does have some very distinct cracks running down it, and I throw a bit of eye liner on it from time to time too ;) ♥